Facebook Publishing News Articles From Media Companies Directly
WASHINGTON, May 13 (UPI) — Despite potentially undermining their own businesses, nine media companies have agreed to directly publish news articles to Facebook starting on Wednesday.
The companies, including The New York Times, NBC News and The Guardian, negotiated for months with Facebook over the social media company’s new product, “Instant Articles.”
“As more people get their news on mobile devices, we want to make the experience faster and richer on Facebook. People share a lot of articles on Facebook, particularly on our mobile app,” Michael Reckhow, product manager at Facebook, wrote in a statement. “However, these stories take an average of eight seconds to load, by far the slowest single content type on Facebook. Instant Articles makes the reading experience as much as ten times faster than standard mobile web articles.”
Facebook has 1.4 billion active users worldwide and much of the traffic to news organizations can come from the social media website, representing 14 to 16 percent of all web traffic to The New York Times, for example.
“The New York Times already has a significant and growing audience on Facebook,” New York Times President and CEO Mark Thompson said in a statement. “We’re participating in Instant Articles to explore ways of growing the number of Times users on Facebook, improving their experience of our journalism and deepening their engagement. We have a long tradition of meeting readers where they are and that means being available not just on our own sites, but on the social platforms.”
News publishers will be able to sell or embed their own advertisements in the articles while keeping all profit, or let Facebook sell its own advertising on the articles with the social media company keeping 30 percent of revenue.
